Kudu-Zombo Programme

THE AREA

The Campo-Ma’an National Park is located in the southwestern corner of Cameroon, bordering on Equatorial Guinea to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The park and its buffer zone cover an area of approximately 700,000 hectares, ranging from a marine façade with mangroves to moist tropical forests and wetlands.

The Kudu-Zombo programme is protecting the exceptional land and seascapes of Campo Ma’an, while promoting sustainable development through initiatives such as ecotourism.

The Kudu-Zombo programme was previously known as the Campo-Ma’an project. The name was changed along with other WWF programmes to reflect local heritage. Kudu means turtle in many local languages in the south of Cameroon while zombo refers to the mandrill, a forest monkey with large blue wrinkles on its face. Both species are special to Campo Ma’an.

Campo Ma’an is home to around 60,000 people, half of whom live and work in the agro-industrial plantations of HEVECAM (rubber plantation) and SOCAPALM (palm oil plantation). Among the local people there are the Bagyeli and Bakola ‘pygmies’, whose culture is based on hunting and gathering, and who have a deep knowledge of the forest, flora and fauna.

Threats

3. Large infrastructural development in the periphery of the national park – the Kribi deep seaport, the prospective railroad from Mbalam to Kribi, the Memve’ele hydroelectric dam

4. Poaching

WWF's INTERVENTION

Support robust patrolling of the park and its periphery to stop poaching and ensure respect for park boundaries; ensure prosecution of poachers.

Ensure large extractive industries and infrastructure projects planned for the landscape take measures to avoid negative impacts on ecosystems and contribute to conservation.

Improve livelihoods through community-based natural resource management and other alternatives for income generation – this will reduce pressure from the growing human population on natural resources, particularly target species (elephants, great apes, marine turtles) and their habitats.

Ensure indigenous people benefit from legal access to natural resources within the park.

Support logging companies in sustainable forest management.

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

We have carried out multiple biodiversity inventories and put in place a system for monitoring target species.

A formal co-management agreement has been signed with the indigenous Bagyeli people, with a focus on enhancing Bagyeli participation in park management. 15 Bagyeli have since been employed as guides and trackers for great apes conservation.

A strengthened team of park guards carries out effective patrols to halt poaching and encroachment. Patrols have tripled in since 2010.

We have enabled the park to obtain important conservation contributions from local industrial developments (HEVECAM, Memve’ele dam).

We have strengthened the ecotourism potential by supporting eco-lodges and a gorilla habituation programme.

We are helping to protect the park’s buffer zone through community development initiatives, micro-credit to farmer cooperatives and the creation of 17 community forests.

We have mobilized civil society platforms and networks, including the creation of an operational coordination of civil society (Coordination Operationnelle de la Société Civile) to lobby large investment projects to protect the integrity of the park.

We have provided the park and civil society with detailed analysis of the environmental impact assessments of large projects, such as the Kribi deep sea port, Memve’ele dam, and CAMIRON Mining Company.